


Break My Fall

by toomuchplor



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Ableism, Episode Tag, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-24
Updated: 2008-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-20 04:14:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchplor/pseuds/toomuchplor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>This is it: the moment he really </i>knows<i> he’s okay.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Break My Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone commits a little h/c cliche!fic in their lives. Don't judge me.
> 
> Content Note: Ableist language that, while in character for McKay (in my opinion) and fitting in the context of the episode aftermath, might also bother some people.

“Oh, hey,” says Rodney, halfway across his quarters before his mind registers the presence of John sprawled on his couch. “Home!” he announces, holding out his hands in demonstration and beaming at John. “In one piece, no less. Keller sprung me.”

And John’s on his feet, his body language like a bow-string, taut and ready and increasingly directed in energy, crossing the space between them until he’s got Rodney by the elbows. Rodney half-thinks that this is great, this is it: the moment he really _knows_ he’s okay; John’s going to slam him up against the wall in the way that Rodney has certainly never imagined, and for the next hour or two they’ll prove to each other that it’s over, that they can forget all about the nightmare of the past few weeks. Forget about Rodney’s humiliating panic, about their long weird peaceful-anguished night on the pier, about Rodney behaving like a child or worse, calling for John incessantly.

But now John’s got Rodney by the elbows, he goes abruptly still, freezes, and Rodney realizes: he’s still wearing John’s stupid leather jacket, the one Keller told him he wouldn’t give back all week. John’s fingers stroke over the leather fitfully, his gaze fixed somewhere around Rodney’s sternum, horrified and weird and Rodney thinks, painfully, _this is how he must have looked at me_ , and wants to throw up.

“Hey, look,” says Rodney, dropping his arms and taking a step away. “We don’t have to.”

John negates Rodney’s gesture with a sideways motion of his head, and when he looks up again he’s back to normal: John’s little psycho-wry smirk pasted on over whatever he’s really feeling. “Shut up and take off your pants, Rodney,” he says. When Rodney hesitates, John steps forward and closes the distance between them, doesn’t waste any time, reaches down and cups Rodney’s cock and breathes out, heavy and hungry, and just like that, Rodney’s desperate for John.

They kiss with John’s hand rubbing at Rodney’s fly, deep unsexy kisses that are more anger and panic than affection, and then they fall back across Rodney’s bed and John straddles Rodney, clawing at his zipper, his boxers. Rodney has to bite down on a nervous giggle because John is clumsy and John is _never_ clumsy, and the giggle turns into a weird hiccup when John swallows him down with no warning. And fuck, Rodney knows John loves this, has watched John get lost for long minutes in the business of sucking Rodney’s cock, but now he’s – he’s – Rodney jams his fingers in John’s hair, feels it thick and a little sticky like John hasn’t bothered to shower in a couple of days.

“Fuck, fuck,” says Rodney, about to come. “John, stop. Wait. John, fuck!” and it’s like he’s talking to himself: John is nowhere to be found. Rodney hauls up on John’s hair to no effect, moves his hands down and finds John’s ears, grabs hold and pulls.

“What, what,” John pants stupidly, glazed and flushed and wet-mouthed.

“Not like this, I want,” Rodney tells him, with the pointed tips of John’s ears hot between his fingers and thumbs, “I want to fuck you, I want to see you.”

“Right,” says John, “right,” and scrambles back to strip down to nothing. Rodney’s mouth goes dry at the sight of him, the familiar dark lines of his torso and muscled legs, his ribs showing a little in the back like he hasn’t eaten much lately, his cock at half-mast and listing around with his hasty motions. Rodney undresses automatically, spares a moment to flatten his hair down because he’s seen some of the footage and doesn’t want John thinking of that, of that _person_ with the slurred consonants and the unkempt hair. “Okay, okay,” says John, getting on his back and pulling Rodney down on top of him, “skip the prep, let’s just fuck.”

And thank god, John just wants to fuck, he’s not thinking about Rodney’s hair or how Rodney lost his shit and pounded on his door, he’s clearly just thinking about basic John Sheppard stuff: Rodney and fucking. Rodney gets the lube, kneels between John’s hairy lean thighs, does a perfunctory job of getting ready (condom, lube, slicking his wet hand around John’s ass, then planting his palms down on the mattress on either side of John’s body) and lines himself up. “I don’t want to hurt you,” says Rodney when he first presses in and feels John tight around him like a vise. John’s heels slip a little on Rodney’s shoulders, John closes his eyes and presses his lips together and breathes out, and he opens to Rodney like a glove and Rodney slides home with a surprised grunt.

“Fuck me,” John tells him, eyes still closed, “as hard as you can.”

“Not that hard,” Rodney bargains, “remember my back last time?” But he draws back, shuddering at the heat of John, turns his head to press his lips against a bony ankle, and slams back in again.

John, who is never noisy, who is compulsive and weird about making any kind of appreciative sound, even for a fucking foot massage, lets out a bitter heart-cry, and Rodney kind of loses it. He forgets about his back and follows John’s heated injunction: hard as he can, deep and fast and John’s fucking _loving_ it, he’s got his head thrown back and every time Rodney slams into him, John makes a desperate loud sound, escalating and rising in pitch until Rodney finds a tempo that makes sweat roll into his eyes, makes John’s body drop into lithe lush submissiveness, John accepting Rodney’s assault on him like he never has before.

Weirdly, orgasm isn’t even a consideration; John’s making him crazy, more turned on than he remembers being, but Rodney’s hit his stride or something. He could do this for hours, for days, pound into John and make John call out for him. Rodney feels like a porn star, he feels amazing and omnipotent and immortal, and “Fuck, John, John, fuck,” and Rodney shoves John’s legs down to his waist, leans forward to kiss John’s noisy mouth, and—

It’s wrong, something’s wrong. Rodney’s body takes a few beats to respond, still driving stupidly in rhythm even after Rodney’s brain flickers back online and describes the problem: he can feel John’s cock against his belly in this position, and it’s soft.

Normally, John can keep an erection through any kind of fucking; he gets hard even if he came thirty seconds earlier in Rodney’s mouth, even when Rodney enters him like this, hastily and without working him open first. It’s as reliable a hot button as Rodney could hope for and it’s – it’s broken or something. Rodney pulls back so hastily, cock flagging, that he leaves the condom inside John, and that makes it all worse when he gets back on his heels and surveys the damage: John’s holding his knees up and apart, he’s sweating and shaking and soft, the condom trailing obscenely out of his ass, his eyes shut and his throat making guttural bereft sounds on every exhale. “God, John,” says Rodney, “what –“

John opens his eyes, blinking. It’s like he’s just noticed that Rodney stopped. “No,” he says, shaking his head, eyes red-rimmed and crazy. “Come on, fuck me some more.”

Rodney reaches between them and tugs at the condom, unable to stand the sight of it: pathetic. “I think you should leave,” he says, and means it: he’s pretty sure that he’s going to throw up in a minute and he wants John gone before that happens.

John’s knees have dropped down but he’s still splayed open, weirdly. John doesn’t do this, doesn’t do vulnerability, and Rodney wants to pull the blankets up over him, something, jesus, because John’s just lying there with his limp cock on display and his shaking hands and shuddering breath.

“Look, you don’t have to,” begins Rodney, acridly, suddenly annoyed that he’s the one of them who is articulate and has to say everything, “I can definitely understand not wanting to fuck the recently retarded man, you don’t have to screw me until I regain my self-esteem or whatever.”

And John nods, still shaking, and throws his forearm over his eyes the way he does when he’s really drunk and trying not to barf. Rodney gets that; his own stomach is still churning and he feels hot and embarrassed like he did a week ago out on the pier.

Except something’s off. John’s shoulders are shaking in rhythm now and for a second Rodney’s furious – John is fucking _laughing_? – before it hits him, what John’s really doing. Why he’s covering his face and why he’s breathing like that, noisy and a little wet. “Shit,” says Rodney, genuinely horrified on John’s behalf. “Oh, shit.” John Sheppard doesn’t do this, he doesn’t fall apart, and he’s going to fucking _hate_ Rodney in about five minutes and for the rest of their fucking lives unless Rodney can figure out a way to pretend like he didn’t notice and it never happened.

But Rodney isn’t good at stoic – if nothing else, he’s proved that spectacularly the past few weeks – and instead of clambering off the mattress and heading for the bathroom for a drink of water to give John a chance to pull his shit together and get the hell out of here, Rodney finds himself tugging at John’s wrist, pulling John’s hand away from his face. “Hey,” he says, and makes himself meet John’s wet gaze. “Hey, I’m still here. I’m still here.” John takes a shaky inhaled breath, his eyes combing Rodney’s expression, sniffing hard. “You’re stuck with me,” says Rodney, “sorry.” He bends down and presses his mouth to John’s, gentle and calm as he can manage. John can’t relax, can’t seem to stop his trembling, so Rodney just knots his fingers in the soft hair at the nape of John’s neck and holds on, kissing: kissing John’s slack mouth, his jaw, his earlobe, his throat.

Gradually John stills, settles, and then it’s tense for a second or two as they feel the weirdness of what’s just happened. But John’s hands skim up Rodney’s sides, clasp his shoulders, and push him down onto the mattress so John can press against his side, on top of Rodney’s chest, steady and solid and warm while they kiss some more. “I –” says John, and backs off for a second, meeting Rodney’s eyes again. He looks almost normal, except for the weird shiny tracks across his cheekbones and the vivid red of his ears. “I don’t think I can – you know.” He gestures down. “Not tonight.” He dips his chin and kisses Rodney’s nose. “But if you –” He steadies himself, tries again. “I want to suck you off. Is that okay?”

Rodney’s instinct is to shake his head, tell John that they don’t have to, that he’s not sure he can come either at this point, but suddenly he reads what John’s really saying, and he nods. John’s mouth quirks ironically and he slides down Rodney’s body. This time his mouth is gentle and slow and he doesn’t say anything when it takes a few minutes for Rodney to get hard. It’s unhurried; John draws it out until Rodney’s worried that he really won’t come, that John’s going to give up and leave after all, but then John pulls off and looks up at Rodney. “Pi,” he says – he _orders_ , Rodney realizes, and Rodney laughs jerkily and sinks his hands into John’s hair and says, “3.1415…”

He comes, long and messy and happy, before he even gets to the twelfth decimal place.

* * *

Since Rodney got his new quarters with his new double bed, John sleeps on the far side of the mattress, and Rodney’s spent too many overheated sweaty nights in John’s armpit to have any complaints about that. But tonight when John rolls onto his side of the bed, he leaves his hand behind, heavy on Rodney’s hip. Rodney grins into his pillow and falls asleep.


End file.
